Ten Time Saving Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

Starting a blog is exciting and a lot of fun but can be challenging too if you are not familiar the blogosphere. Thousands of new blogs are published every single day. Getting your blog noticed is becoming more and more difficult. Old methods of generating traffic can be way too time consuming for busy moms. But don’t let this discourage you. There are several simple ways you can get more visitors to your blog without spending hours and hours in front of your computer. I have been blogging since 2007 and have tried and tested nearly everything that other bloggers recommend to increase my page views. Below are ten of my favorite ways to generate website traffic in less time.

1. Comment on high traffic blogs.

If you want to have a loyal following and increase your readership and comments you must comment on other blogs. A lot of well known bloggers spend all day reading and commenting on blogs. But from experience I know that this is time consuming and nearly impossible for bloggers with a job outside the home or a busy family life. My suggestion is comment on high traffic blogs only.

How do you know if it is a high traffic blog? blogs that consistently receive 50+ comments on their articles and have over 1,000 readers and or Facebook fans are the best place to start. Do your research first and find out what blogs in your niche meet those requirements. Then make a list of the top ten. Make sure you visit those blogs every single day. You can also make another list of ten or more high traffic blogs and visit one of those a day rotating the list so that you are commenting on a variety of blogs. When you leave your comments make sure you link to your blog. You should get comments from the blog owners in return and you may also get traffic from their readers as long as you leave your link.

“StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of over 15 million other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like () automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.” StumbleUpon.com

I love this site and I get about 20% of my daily traffic from StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site that has been around for a long time. The site is designed for users to share links with each other and review websites in the StumbleUpon network and add your own websites to their network. If you stumble all of your articles each one will be added to their network.

StumbleUpon also has a great free tool for publishers that makes sharing links faster and easier called Su.pr. Su.pr shortens your links and lets you post to the StumbleUpon network and to twitter. The application also tracks the clicks for you so you know which articles are your most popular. You can also connect your blog feed to your Su.pr account so that it automatically posts your article once you publish it. StumpleUpon also has a Su.pr tool for Firefox which makes bookmarking links even easier.

Time commitment: 10 minutes a day tops.

3. Facebook.

Do I need to say more? Every blog must have a Facebook page in order to get noticed. Facebook is the most visited website in the world. It has even surpassed Google. Once you have your page set up you need to know how to use it effectively in order to get more “likes.” If your blog hosts a lot of giveaways you have an advantage. Make your readers like you on Facebook in order to enter the giveaway. This is a great way to start to grow your Facebook “likes.” You must also link to your Facebook page on the front of your blog. If you have at least 200 “likes” displaying the Facebook widget on your sidebar is a great way to encourage more readers to “like” your site.

Make sure you use your Facebook page every day. Post links to your articles on your page as soon as you publish them. Visit your page every day. Keep your readers engaged on your page by commenting on what they say. Let them post links on your Facebook page. People love to share links to their blogs and websites. In fact I encourage my readers and advertisers to leave their links on my Facebook. “Like” similar websites on Facebook and participate on their page. You can “like” a website as your blog instead of yourself. When you participate by commenting on these pages you are leaving a link to your Facebook page which will encourage others to “like” you back.

Time commitment: 20 minutes to a half an hour each day.

4. Post to forums.

Visit forums that are related to your niche and actively participate. If you are looking for a forum to join The Blog Frog is a great place to start. This is an online community designed especially for bloggers. You can join for free and even start your own forum for your blog. Find and join communities that are related to your niche. Participate in discussions you find interesting and make sure you always start your own discussions and leave links to your blog every single day. You can read more about tips on posting to forums in this article:

A great way to capture e mail addresses is to offer something free to your visitors. For example, you can give away an e book on something related to your niche. E books are simple to make as long as you have the right software. OpenOffice is a free publishing suite that allows you to turn any document into a PDF. E-Books in PDF format are the most accesable to every day computer users.

Once you have what I call “bait” (free offer) to capture the e mail addresses you need to have a reliable e-mail marketing program. I have been using Aweber for years to send out my newsletters. Their service is professional and the best e mail marketing software out there. And for a small fee every month it is well worth it.

Once you have your newsletter set up make sure you e mail your subscribers at least once a week and provide plenty of links to your blog in your e mails.

Time commitment: One week to a month to create the free e book, a half an hour a week to update your newsletter.

6. Be consistent with your articles.

If you only have time to write once a week make sure you stick to the same day each week to publish your article. I write Monday-Friday and take weekends off. If I am out of town I try to schedule past articles to re-run while I am away. If you plan on writing every single day try to publish your articles at the same time each day.

Time commitment: varies, a half and hour to two hours per article.

7. Write about newsworthy or controversial topics.

Every morning I make sure I check the news headlines before I write. If I find something hot that the mainstream media is covering then I write about it, as long as it is in the same niche as my blog. My articles on current events and controversial topics are the most popular ones on my blog.

8. Make sure your website and articles are search engine optimized.

I could easily publish a fifty page e-book on optimizing your blog for the search engines. Instead I will try to squeeze the important points in a couple of paragraphs. If your blog does not appear on the front page of Google for your main keyword or phrase you are losing out on a ton of traffic. Over 60% of my traffic comes directly from the search engines. We are number one in Google for these keywords and phrases:

It took a lot of hard work, time and a little money in order to get there. If you are serious about getting your blog optimized for the search engines get a professional SEO firm to help you. It might cost a little money but it will be well worth it in the end.

In order to be properly indexed your site must have search engine friendly meta tags, your keywords should appear somewhere on the front page of your site, and you must have other sites similar to yours link to you.

Do a Google search on SEO tips for blogs and how to create meta tags for your blog. You can also check out the article below for more SEO tips.

Time commitment: varies depending on whether you want to do this yourself or hire a SEO firm. 9. Ping your blog every single day.

There are several pinging services out there that are completely free. Why do you need to ping your blog’s feed?

“A ping is a way of notifying the major search engines to make them know that the blog that you have created has had a recent update. This is like calling up these search engines and letting them know that a certain update has been made. You ping by making a bookmark or placing an entry into one of the sites for blogging: examples include Technorati, del.icio.us, Furl, Flickr, and Blinklist.

The pinging alerts that are sent to the major sites for blog tracking help numerous search engines on re-indexing the new contents that have been added at a quicker pace. This is also a good way for the search engines to analyze what would be better for the business that you are watching over. Pinging brings over a lot of potential clients to the Web site. With the traffic already targeted, there are much better chances that these potential clients become real customers.Visitors to the sites that you have pinged will be able to see your blog’s link once an update has been made. Also, since what is being discussed here are the majority of search engines, and also high-traffic directories, then it is very likely that people who visit these sites are more prone to click on the link that leads back to your blog. This makes your market more specific or targeted.” Why You Should Ping Your Blog by Shane Woods

I search for “ping your blog free” on Google and pick a different pinging service every day.

10. Be professional.

Know the dos and don’t of professional blogging. Do not send out spam e mails or leave spammy comments on other blogs. Do use your real name or a pen name for your blogger account or wordpress account. If you are known by the title of your blog for example, Silly Mom from the Silly Mom blog, then go ahead and use Silly Mom for your name. However if your blog is titled “Pregnancy and Wellness Resource for Moms” you do not want to have your name be Pregnancy and Wellness Resource. Go ahead and use your real name or a pen name like Jane Smith.

Add a professional profile along with an updated headshot at the bottom of your articles. This helps inform readers about who you are and lets them know that you are serious about blogging.

Be consistent with all of your social network profiles. Make sure they are all the same. This helps people out when they are searching for you across different social media networks. I’ll admit I still need to double check all of mine to make sure they are the same.

Edit your articles before you publish them. Make sure your grammar looks good and you don’t have any spelling errors. I made a major spelling error for an advertiser a while back and learned my lesson the hard way. Don’t make the same mistake!

Time commitment: varies.

On the average I spend about 4-5 hours a day blogging by using these ten tips. This gives me time in the afternoon and evening to spend with my family and housework. Don’t let your blog take over your life. When I first started blogging I was spending up to 10 hours a day blogging and I missed out a lot of quality family time. I hope you do not make the same mistakes I did.

Most of all, have fun!

About This Author

Cascia Talbert is a busy blogger, publisher, freelance writer, online merchant and mother of five children, living in The Pacific Northwest. With a B.A. in history and law and a passion for writing and staying healthy, she started The Healthy Moms Magazine in 2007. The Healthy Moms Magazine is currently ranked the top health blog for moms and features several health expert writers and mom bloggers. Ms. Talbert believes that if mothers are well educated on health issues and how to stay healthy, they can pass that information down to their children and reverse the childhood obesity statistics in the U.S.

About The Author

Cascia Talbert is a devout Catholic, mother of five children, health and fitness enthusiast and positive parenting supporter. She is also the founder of the award winning online health, fitness, parenting and Christian faith magazine for moms, the Healthy Moms Magazine. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, five children and one spoiled cat. Her hobbies include gardening, country music, running, and playing her flute.
Check out her first book, "Taking Care of your Family's Health and Well-being, Saints to Turn to and the Catholic Faith," available anywhere books are sold.

Kelly, from my experience with Facebook, you have to be consistant and post something to it every single day. I don't get a lot of traffic from Facebook because I just do not have the time to spend with my fan page. But on occassion I use Facebook ads to promote mostly events that I host. Also I have found that if you share an interesting image on Facebook it will help you gain more facebook fans and traffic to your site when you share your links. Post an image to your fan page every single day. Make sure it is an image that you would share on your personal facebook page. Those are the ones that I have noticed go viral and give me more fans. I hope this helps. Good luck! Thank you for stopping by and leaving us a comment!